October 2025 Drabble #1

Soldier76/Reaper – Jack wakes up disoriented and thinking he's still dreaming when he sees his worst nightmare standing at his bed.

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Jack has been dreaming. He can’t say of what exactly, though he could hazard an educated guess if asked. His heart is still pounding and his skin clammy with sweat. With the life he’s led, it’s really not difficult to surmise that he’s been having a nightmare. Or maybe he still does.

His room around him is dark as he slowly opens eyes whose lids are heavy as stones. It feels like a sack of cement is sitting right in the middle of his ribcage, pressing his solar plexus toward his spine. He blinks slowly, groaning softly. The sound rattles out of his throat like razor blades. He usually sounds rough, but now it feels like his vocal chords are still in another dimension.

There’s a rustling at the foot of his bed. He rolls his eyes to see a dark shape looming threateningly where there should be a blank, unadorned wall. His heart seizes in his chest and the feeling of weight against his ribs increases.

Jack’s eyes travel up to stare at the bone white features of Reaper’s mask. He blinks once. Twice. Wills himself to wake up because this had to be a nightmare. There’s no way he’d be able to get into the base undetected, Winston designed a whole range of sensitive sensors that-

Reaper reaches up and grasps his mask, slowly pulling it away from his face. It looks different than the handful of times Jack had been able to see it. It always has some minute changes, like Gabriel is no longer sure what he originally looked like and tries to put up a facsimile fo it.

This time he has not even tried: he does not possess lips, his teeth look unnaturally sharp as they grin at Jack in a stiff grimace.

Reaper lets the mask clatter to the floor and moves forward, his knee pressing into the mattress right at the edge.

Jack tenses. Or… he wants to tense. But his muscles are not cooperating. He does not know why he hadn’t noticed earlier, but his body is just… it is not moving. Panic seizes his throat and has his heart pump faster when Reaper reaches out with sharp tipped claws and slowly curls one hand around one of Jack’s ankles; pulling his leg a little straighter and then to the side. Opening him up so he can crawl a little closer, movements feline and blackness extending from his back like the tentacles of a kraken.

“Are you afraid?” Reaper asks in Gabriel’s voice; a little more echo-y and a little more husky, but so much Gabriel’s voice that Jack’s insides clench painfully and then relax and grow very, very warm. He’s just staring at him, unable to even talk. He wills his body to start moving, but it’s just lead weight. Paralyzed.

Without lips, Reaper can not smile, but it rings along with his voice anyway as he pushes himself between Jack’s legs and ranges above him, the dark tendrils at his back slowly descending over them. “Good,” he purrs.